


It's Kinda Strange Now You're Gone

by distefanos



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Established Relationship, Implied Thierry Henry/Cesc Fàbregas, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-04
Updated: 2015-03-04
Packaged: 2018-03-15 18:51:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3457982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/distefanos/pseuds/distefanos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inspired by the Man City - Chelsea match on January 31st, 2015.</p><p>To the tune of Fireside by Arctic Monkeys (And I thought I was yours forever, but maybe I was mistaken)</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Kinda Strange Now You're Gone

The thing about Legends is that their presence is superimposed on a space long after they desert it. And when they return in a different capacity, their new image is lined up with what they left behind, and maybe it doesn't quite match up, but it's as close as anyone will ever get to it again. And by God, be it the Blues or not, they'll take what small taste they can get.

I was a part of a Legend once. Maybe it's that the Emirates never truly felt like home like Highbury did, but when I go there, sometimes I'm not sure they remember me. The statue out front is a ghost of all of that, and what we were made of lurks around the walls of a new ground, and sometimes sits in the stands to watch the future play. When I walk through the door, sometimes the past echoes down porous concrete corridors heavy with history even in it's youth and I think that I can hear myself in that. When I walk onto the pitch, I swear I can still hear my name. I think somewhere down the line I dropped my legend status. I'm not sure where I expected to pick it up again. Maybe I'm too young to reflect on the mark I made just yet. Maybe there's still time for me. But when Frank Lampard walked onto the pitch at Stamford Bridge in the wrong shade of blue, there was no mistaking the admiration shining in the eyes of every single person there. And when I looked into the face of my team mates, there was no mistaking the love they bear for him still.

Men like Frank Lampard, they no longer have to consider their own mortality. If he were to die tomorrow, he'd live on forever in the hallowed grounds of Stamford Bridge. When the crowd triumphant rise as one to their feet, he rises with them. When joy sings through the heart of every Blues fan, that joy is for him and every other Chelsea Legend that has tread this grass. I have looked eternity in the eye and it is an entire stadium calling out your name, now and forever because you will always belong to them. Your name becomes synonymous with a hundred victories earned by your blood and your sweat in this exact place; with the club itself and the history you helped create.

I am confronted with the idea of my own mortality every calendar day. I was forced to stare it in the face once, years ago, when I had reached a crossroads of sorts. I may have chosen the devil in search of life eternal over my first love. Chosen controlling my own fate over a life of purpose that promised the eternity I was looking for; I just never believed in it. I have considered my mortality every day since, in the stiffness in my limbs, in the hair retreating further and further back on my skull, in the laugh lines on my face that aren't only there when I smile anymore. It seems the devil made promises I couldn't live up to, perhaps. But like I said, I'm young(ish) still. There are marks yet that I can draw with the soles of my feet that still see fit to carry me along the road that hopefully leads somewhere I've been searching for all my life.

My greatest fear is the very real fact that not everyone can be a Legend, and I may fall on the side of never having been meant for that at all.

_____________________________________________________

His presence imposed itself on the corridor before he became visible to me.

It was the way the smile died on Eden's lips, the way his hand, moments before batting playfully at my hat, dropped to his side. A quick movement, as if he had been caught sticking his hand somewhere it's not allowed to be. It was the way his entire body tensed, fight or flight mode, and the way the air in the corridor had changed. Like it had been sucked out entirely, so that Eden couldn't even gasp for breath, just stand there, sucking the absence of it into his lungs, gulping like a fish out of water.

And then my mind caught up with everything outside of the tiny bubble of space shared by myself and Eden, and the rest of the corridor was filled with a tiny reunion, hands thumping backs and big hugs in spite of the competition bearing down upon us all. Eden had gone silent, and I was trying to place this moment, this reaction, next to the last time we had met with Manchester City, but couldn't recall having watched the boy close enough to have caught this strange behaviour.

And then Frank Lampard was upon us and I was nudging Eden in the side as he flung an arm across his shoulder. And for the first time since I'd really known him, Eden Hazard looked his age.

It had me wondering if Titi made me glow like this. Maybe he never lit me on fire the way Frank's gaze was splotching red in the boy's cheeks because I was treated with a respect that Lampard was glossing over, but did he make me look this young? Eden, a smirk and quick quick quick words to counter anything, always countering everything, rarely could you remember that he was barely 24. With Lampard's arm around him and the leering look that cast a feeble grin onto his face he could have passed for 17.

If Titi's wolf's grin ever made me react like this I hope I shed my sheepskin long ago. Eden's face puckers in a rightful frown as he considers the effect Frank is forcing upon his body. He glances irritably at me as if it's my fault I'm intruding on this moment, and so I turn and stalk away. I don't look back as Diego falls into step beside me. We are heading for the stands to watch a match I am not fit for, and neither is Costa in another sense. Diego Costa facing punishment for a crime that has got him where he is today. And they think he'll learn from this, one time in hundreds they've plucked out of thousands of minutes played, expecting him to understand that this is for all the times before. 

_____________________________________________________

A bit of a mess of a match really, but not unexpected. I think the saving grace was that Lampard didn't slither onto the Etihad green at the 77th minute to score a goal against his family, to prove to his new (albeit temporary) admirers that he is in fact theirs. Somehow I think that would be more offensive to fans who traveled with us. Frank Lampard scoring at Stamford Bridge is one thing, as normal as breathing, but Frank Lampard scoring in a new home stadium _against_ Chelsea, well, that's insult to injury. Maybe Frank knew that, or maybe it just wasn't his day. I don't wonder long whether he would care. I wouldn't.

And I sat in the stands in a stupid hat my wife gave me and Diego Costa mumbling nonsense in my ear. Acting like the game would be won already if only he were out there with them. Threats spewed in strange Spanish about this or that player who's name was not a name at all but a vulgar nickname he's just made up and maybe the number on the back of their shirt. When he said the number it sounded more like he was committing it to memory than saying it for my reference. It made me almost afraid of what the information was being stored for. What fate bestowed my old friend Jesús Navas should he ever warm the bench for Spain again, I wasn't sure. Maybe Diego will have laid the grudge to rest by then, maybe the words were just words, and not the promises they sounded like. 

Eden played well, he always does. And at the end of the match when Lampard made his rounds, I paid close attention to the stiff hug and the cardboard smile Eden left him with. Staring blankly over Frank's shoulder, a half grin that hardly showed his teeth. Something Lampard said then soured his expression entirely, and when they pulled away he marched straight off the pitch, eyes fixed resolutely on the ground.

_____________________________________________________

"Am I yours?" Hours later, in a hotel suite we go to often, Eden has crowded me against the wall next to the bathroom where he found me when he arrived. His coat is still on and the cold air has pinched pink into his cheeks. His grip on my shoulders is as biting as the air outside. For a second I don't answer, and the cold tip of his nose is pressing into my neck, deep breaths instead of lips against skin. I pluck the buttons on his coat and the two sides spring apart, smoothly I slide it down off his shoulders. 

"Am I yours?" He asks again. I take this as permission to wrap my arms around his waist, and almost imperceptibly he sinks into me. His hip bone, which I often feel is curved to fit perfectly against my own, digs painfully into my lower stomach. I pull him even closer and his head is still pressing into my throat.

"I don't know what the answer is." I tell him. A half truth, the answer is not mine to give. I nudge him lightly and he seems to awaken. I released his waist and he lets himself fall onto the bed on his back, the heels of his hands pressing into his eyes. 

"I was somebody's once." He tells me through his wrists. 

"Is that so..." I begin. This is not the usual script. 

"I guess I belonged to a few. But never the way I belonged to him." There it was again, that reverence. To have been touched by a Legend...

I slip into bed beside him, pull his hands from his face. He lets them fall to his side and stares instead at the ceiling. My hands are wandering now to his lap, slow soothing circles across sensitive skin. Find more buttons to pull apart. He pulls his jeans off without waiting to be asked or for things to progress.

"I think I was wrong. I was never his. Not the way he was mine." He is wistful now. All youthful disillusionment. 

"You have only ever been your own." I reply. 

"I want to be yours, Cesc. I want you to take me like I have only ever been yours."

I press myself against his back, my hand between his thighs and he arches into my touch. I kiss his neck and he shoves his perfect ass against me and I'm getting hard already, the feel of it grinding up against my dick. I push up against him as he tenses and it feels so fucking good already. I'm so used to being fucked by him, to actually be inside him is something I never thought he'd allow. He seems urgent for it to happen as he's pulling his boxers down over the swell of his ass, reaching his hand around to make me rub off against him. I'm running my fingernails across his chest, pinching his nipples to hardness between my fingers and leaving small bites along his shoulder. He growls and turns to face me.

"I want to feel foolish for thinking I could ever be anybody's except yours. I want you to fuck me like Thierry fucked you." He begs. I don't ask how he knows this, all I catch is the pleading tone and the light in his eyes of someone who wants to lose themselves completely. I don't know if I'm strong enough to do what Thierry does but I sure as fuck want to try. Without another word I flip Eden on his stomach and dutifully he presents himself to me on his knees.

He passes me the lube and he jumps a little when the cold substance drips onto the small of his back. I rub it in and circle his entrance slowly. He edges back into the sensation and I move my hand instead to the condom he has thrown beside me.

"I don't want this to be easy, I just want you to fuck me. Do it now." Even as he takes it he is ever so demanding.

I do as I am told as always. I wrap my arms around his tight stomach as he braces against the pain. His legs give out from under him, his thighs shaking from the effort of holding himself up and from adjusting to the pressure. My arms are pressed between his body and the mattress and I ball my hands into fists for resistance. I give his body 5 seconds to adjust to me inside him. He's so fucking tight I wonder the last time he had someone inside him but I think that I was there. Diego Costa 3 months ago. He whimpers but he also rolls his hips in the most delicious way that I shudder against him. He's so fucking good.

"Fuck me Cesc. Do it. Fuck me hard." His supplicant tone again makes me want to last a lot longer than I know I will. I start a somewhat shallow thrust in and out and he pushes up so my cock is filling him unexpectedly, making me gasp. I jump a little, afraid of bottoming out and he bites a laugh into the pillow.

"Fuck, Cesc. Hard. Please. Do it. I need this." His voice is muffled by the pillow pressing into his face. I go a little faster, push a little deeper each time and his hips jump and I'm already coming apart. Fuck. 

Determined to make this as good as it can possibly feel I push deep and try to stroke him against the mattress but all I can do is help him find friction against the rough comforter. He's groaning louder and louder into the bed and I'm pushing him harder and harder into the mattress. My whole body is screaming to come but I'm trying to hold out as long as possible. 

"Fuck you're so fucking tight." I tell him by way of defeat. My body is on the very edge and to tumble over will take only a few thrusts more. My movements are becoming inconsistent as my balls tighten and I struggle to stay upright. He senses that I'm close and starts stroking himself faster and moaning, his body bucking with the effort of moving against the mattress which just drives me to orgasm with a cry of my own. I suck a moan into his neck hard as I come, the tightness of his ass pulling wave after wave of shuddering orgasm through me. I almost feel like I'm going over the edge again when his hole tightens even more as he comes into the mattress and into our hands. "You're mine." I say, without even thinking. If I could claim him a thousand times more. If all it takes is those 2 words. Or is it 3? I collapse on top of him and between our sweaty bodies I'm contemplating my grasp of the English language. When I roll over the air is cool against my stomach. 

When Eden rolls over he looks so completely relaxed in a way I've never seen before. He glows with youthfulness and also a smugness that I'm familiar with. He knows exactly how good he is, exactly what words he has plucked from the deepest channels of my heart. To claim somebody, to be important to one or to many. It's unclear to me which task is more daunting.

"But everybody says that to me when they come." He says, his lower lip jutting out petulantly, a mischievous smile in his eyes. He's basking too much in the languor of his post-coital high to actually take anything seriously.

"I'll say it every time if you'll let me do that again." I lean over and kiss him, my tongue tasting him greedily, his tongue swirling promises against my lower lip. I just came hard inside of him but he looks so good like this I could almost go again. He relaxes into the kiss for a while, but then we both lay back, exhausted. And this moment feels like _it_ , like claiming Eden for myself alone was both fleeting and immutable. It was forever and it was just that exact moment that I felt myself shake apart inside of him, and the same moment that he shattered with the effort of being filled by me. The part that I don't understand is how you take that moment and make it something that surpasses all of the time we have to make it worth remembering.

"You can be mine forever if you keep letting me do that." I tell him as I close my eyes, drifting.

I don't know if he believes me and I don't know if I mean it. But for now I do. I have lived a thousand meaningful moments just like this and I will live a thousand more, but for now his arm resting across my chest, the rise and fall of his own, and his final words before slipping into sleep, are enough to make me feel like immortality is borne of my actions and not of my considerations.

Simple words, no timeline attached, no expiration date, legendary status.

"I wanna be yours," he mumbles, the words snagging on his swollen tired tongue. I wonder if he hasn't always been.


End file.
